CRANBERRY TWP — The National Weather Service suspects that a particularly strong wind caused nine power poles along Route 228 to come down Tuesday night, shutting down the busiest corridor in the county during morning rush hour today.

Lee Hendricks with the weather service said representatives of the NWS had not yet been able to visit the Cranberry site, but believed based on photographs they had seen that the area might have been hit with a wind event smaller than a microburst.

The downed power lines in Cranberry shut down Route 228 in both directions from its intersection with Route 19 down to Cranberry Woods Drive. The road closure was affecting several businesses in the office park there, including Westinghouse Electric’s headquarters. There were also street lights that were downed in the storm.

Drivers also didn’t have access to Route 228 from Interstate 79 on either the northbound or southbound ramps, closures that created residual delays along interstate exits from Allegheny County all the way up to Evans City.

Those delays caused cars to back up onto the interstate from the exits and could have caused at least one accident just south of the Cranberry Township exit in the southbound lanes of I-79.

First Energy spokesman Chris Eck said crews came from Ohio and had been working through the night to clear the scene. He said the power lines went down around 7 p.m. Tuesday. He said the company was looking at the possibility that a microburst was responsible for taking down so many poles at once.

Power was restored to all of the neighboring businesses, although it’s currently unclear how the thousands of employees who work in Cranberry Woods are getting into work.

The road was to remain closed indefinitely and officials couldn’t offer a timetable for when it might reopen. That’s because crews were still working to install new utility poles and, once that’s completed, they have to rewire the area.

“With the ground being wet, resetting the poles will be a little difficult,” Eck said. “It’s a logistics challenge to get everything together we need to get the poles and wires back up.”

Cranberry Sgt. Chuck Mascellino said at the scene that officials hoped to reopen Route 228 in incremental phases, although he couldn’t make any promises as to how or when that might happen.

He added that a detour was established from Routes 8, 910 and 19 for traffic coming into Cranberry Township, including heavy truck traffic that can’t use back roads like Franklin Road to get around the closure.

Westinghouse spokesman Sheila Holt said officials were quick in getting the word out to businesses and that their quick response enabled employees to find alternate routes to work.

“Westinghouse employees in Cranberry have been able to adapt their plans for the commute and it’s business as usual,” she said.

Other areas affected

PennDOT said as of this morning portions of Route 38 were closed for precautionary reasons. Most of those spots were in the area of the Route 68, 38, 422 interchange. PennDOT said the road likely would reopen as soon as the water recedes.

As of 9:45 a.m., the 911 center reported the following roads closed in Butler County:

Saw Mill Run Road between Eberhart Road and England Street in Butler Township.

South Chestnut Street between West Jefferson and West Birch streets in Butler.

Eagle Mill Road in Connoquenessing.

According to the First Energy website, the Chicora area was without power to more than 100 customers as of 8:30 a.m. today.

Rainfall amounts in Butler County were not as high as Monday night, which peaked at 2.2 inches.

The NWS reports 1.6 inches in the northeastern corner of the county, 1.38 inches near Slippery Rock and 1.21 inches at the Butler County Airport.

Among the 54 weather-related 911 calls between 11:30 p.m. Tuesday night and 8 this morning, there were reports of flooded basements and numerous wires down.

Eagle Staff Writers Jim Smith and Kim Paskorz contributed to this report.